The Fantasticks is a 1960 musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 with music by Harvey Schmidt

Harvey Schmidt

Harvey Lester Schmidt is an American composer for musical theatre. He is best known for composing the music for the longest running musical in history, The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway from 1960 - 2002.-Biography:...

 and lyrics by Tom Jones

Tom Jones (writer)

Tom Jones is a lyricist of musical theatre. His best known work is The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway from 1960 until 2002, and the hit song from the same, Try to Remember. Other songs from "The Fantasticks" include "Soon It's Gonna Rain", "Much More" and "I Can See It"...

. It was produced by Lore Noto. It tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the play "The Romancers" ("Les Romanesques") by Edmond Rostand

Edmond Rostand

Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism, and is best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac. Rostand's romantic plays provided an alternative to the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century...

, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into falling in love by pretending to feud and erecting a wall between their houses. The fathers then hire traveling actors to stage a mock abduction, so that Matt can heroically seem to save Luisa, settling the supposed feud and securing their fathers' blessings (which of course the young lovers have really had all along).